Truth is the beginning of wisdom…

Quotes To Ponder

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse [money, bounty, assistance, gifts] from the public treasury.
- Alexis de Tocqueville

From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
- Alexander Frazer Tytler

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Archive for June, 2008

Spain’s environmental committee approved legislation Wednesday that would grant apes the right to life and freedom. The Great Apes Project would extend human rights to chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos.

Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said human beings are being replaced as the premier species. “Now, we are merely one great ape among several others, each with minimum rights based on individual capacities rather than due to being members of the human species,” he wrote on his blog. “This is a disaster for universal human rights.”

Under the legislation, it would be illegal to keep apes for TV commercials, filming or circuses. Zoos would be required to drastically improve their conditions.

Maybe they will be voted to run Spain’s environmental committee? … O, they are already there!

“Survey Shows U.S. Religious Tolerance” was the headline of a New York Times article about the Pew Forum’s survey of America’s religious landscape. It found that Americans have acquired a “non-dogmatic approach to faith.” In fact, 70% of Americans who claim affiliation to a religious body – including Christians – agreed that “many religions can lead to eternal life.” Nearly the same percentage said that “there’s more than one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.” WHAT?

What’s true of faith is also true of morals when 78% say that there are “absolute standards of right and wrong.” But only 29% say that they “rely on their religion to delineate these standards.” Instead, more than half of the respondents said that they rely on “practical experience and common sense.” As the Book of Judges aptly puts it, “every man did what was right in his own eyes” has become the practice of the day.

Not surprisingly, the media repeatedly used the word “tolerant” to characterize America’s religious beliefs.

But to be regarded as “tolerant” today no longer means extending “full rights of free speech and free expression” to those of all faiths. Instead, it appears that “tolerance” now requires what journalist Terry Mattingly calls a “certain doctrine of salvation,” that regards all “religious paths” as leading “to the top of the same eternal mountain.”

So, it is not possible anymore to debate religious truth claims respectfully. Instead, the new “tolerance,” which has become our ultimate civic virtue, requires abandoning all truth claims lest we “offend” somebody.

This applies everywhere: over the water cooler at work or even in presidential politics. When asked recently in a private meeting with religious leaders whether Jesus was the only way to salvation, Barack Obama reportedly said, “Jesus is the only way for me. I’m not in a position to judge other people.” Was Obama merely trying not to offend non-Christians, or did his answer reflect what he truly believes? This growing relativism is becoming rampant even among “Christians.”

The problem is that all religions make mutually exclusive truth claims. Either Jesus is, as He Himself said, “the only way to the Father,” or He is not. What Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus say about the person and work of Jesus Christ cannot be reconciled. They cannot all be true.

It’s called the law of non-contradiction – it goes back to Aristotle: If proposition A is true – that is, if it conforms to reality – then proposition B, making a contrary claim, cannot be true as well.

We can trace our debased definition of “tolerance” back to French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who rejected any distinction between “civil” and “theological intolerance.” Rousseau did not believe that people can “live at peace with those [they] regard as damned.” He saw Christian truth claims as being intolerant. Specifically, he wrote, anyone who dared to say “no salvation outside the church” should be driven out of society – that is precisely what is happening today.

Have we been so taken in by our own culture that we have abandoned truth? The antidote to this is that Christians need to be grounded in their basic beliefs, or indeed will be swept up in the tides of surging relativism.

Environmentalists are constantly clamoring for higher gas taxes as the cure-all to their insane global warming theory. Clinton proposed a 26 cent tax on gas. John Kerry said it should be 50 cents. Gore has proposed that gas taxes be raised gradually to match prices in Europe and Japan. But they write off all their gas … what does it cost them?

Consumers though, currently pay about 46 cents per gallon in gasoline taxes. That’s not including taxes paid directly to the government by the oil companies and passed onto consumers. As the inestimable economist John Lott has pointed out, in the past 25 years oil companies have paid more than three times in taxes what they have made in profits.

Barack Hussein Obama’s response to soaring gas prices is to have the oil companies collect even more money from us at the pump, proposing a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies. “Corporate taxes” sound like taxes on rich people, but all they do is force corporations to collect taxes on behalf of the government and guess who it is really costing? That’s right the taxpayer – you!

Democrats have worked hard to ensure that Americans pay as much for gas as Europeans do.That is part of the socialist doctrine. After a quarter-century of gas tax hikes, a ban on drilling for oil (that should never had happened) and a complete destruction of the nuclear power industry in America, I guess the liberal socialists can declare: Mission accomplished!

In response to skyrocketing gas prices, liberals say, practically in unison, “We can’t drill our way out of this crisis.”What does that mean? This is like telling a starving man, “You can’t eat your way out of being hungry!” “You can’t water your way out of drought!” “You can’t sleep your way out of tiredness!” “You can’t drink yourself out of dehydration!”

Seriously, what does it mean? Finding more oil isn’t going to increase the supply of oil? Will not food stop you from being hungry?

It is the typical Democratic strategy to babble meaningless slogans, as if they have a plan. How do liberals propose we acquire the energy required for the economic activity and production that results in light appearing when they flick a switch? The larger enterprise involved in producing that little miracle seems to elude them.

Liberals complain that – as Barack Hussein Obama put it – there’s “no way that allowing offshore drilling would lower gas prices right now. At best you are looking at five years or more down the road.” Isn’t that why the drilling should have happened five years plus ago? Why didn’t anyone propose drilling back then? Where was Obama during these discussions, then?

You know what we need? We need a group of people paid to anticipate national crises and plan solutions in advance. It would be such an important job, the taxpayers would pay them salaries so they wouldn’t have to worry about making a living and could just sit around anticipating crises. If only we had had such a group – let’s call them “elected representatives” – they could have proposed drilling five years ago!

But of course we do pay people to anticipate national problems and propose solutions. Some of them – we’ll call them Republicans – did anticipate high gas prices and propose solutions. Six years ago President Bush had the foresight to demand that Congress allow drilling in a minuscule portion of the Alaska’s barren, uninhabitable Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). In 2002, Bush, Tom DeLay and the entire Republican Party were screaming from the rooftops: Drill! Drill! Drill! We would be gushing oil now – except the Democrats stopped the drilling.

Drilling on only 0.01 percent of ANWR’s 19 million acres was projected to produce about 10 billion barrels of oil. From all domestic sources combined, we currently produce about 1.8 billion barrels of oil per year. To a layperson like myself, 10 billion barrels seems like a lot of oil.

The other party – plus John McCain – ferociously opposed drilling in ANWR, drilling offshore or drilling anyplace else. I refuse to believe they care about Americans having to pay high gas prices or high taxes. When will they put America and Americans first instead of themselves and their power mongering?

Beneath Obama’s flowery rhetoric lies a dangerous economic plan that will wreak havoc on the American economy. Obama plans to return to the failed policies of high taxation coupled with an expansion of government spending. This coming tax-and-spend nightmare is being referred to as Obamanomics.

Worse, Obama says he is absolutely committed to almost doubling the capital gains rate – something he will easily accomplish with a Democrat Congress. In the coming months – when investors realize that Obama will raise the cap gains rate – there will easily be a stampede of asset sales as investors rush to take their profits now to avoid Obama’s doubling of the tax rates next year.

Obama’s strategies will not just affect the larger economy, but your personal wealth as well. Obama is making no bones about his plans to go on a tax rampage. Not only would he increase the capital-gains tax rate from 15% to as much as 28%, but he plans to allow the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010, which will raise the taxes on Americans by tens of billions of dollars.

He also wants to do away with the $102,000 FICA payroll tax cap, which means anyone making over $102,000 would pay an additional 7% in taxes on earned income. Also, the loan dividend tax rate George Bush implemented, under a President Obama will be gone.

Obama’s policies could cost more than $850 billion over four years and boost some tax rates to 60%. His Social Security plan is one giant income redistribution scheme

If you are concerned about your family’s financial well-being – and that the American economy remains strong – don’t vote him in. When Obama says trust him for change … DON’T !

While liberals like to talk about “rights,” it is becoming ever clearer that those rights are only reserved for whomever the Democrats deem deserving. Men in dresses, homosexuals, and statutory rapists who bring underage children in for an abortion all deserve special rights. However, unborn children, Christians and conservative radio hosts do not.

One “special interest group” that the liberals have warred against over the years is parents. When it comes to issues like education, abortion, and medical information, today’s liberals – most of them Democrats – have consistently supported legislation that removes any decision-making ability from a child’s parents.

Yesterday the House had a chance to vote on a Motion to Recommit (MTR) presented by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on H.R. 5876, the STOP Abuse Act. An MTR is a procedural move that returns a bill to committee to amend it. This MTR would have required parental consent before distributing any prescription medication, including contraception and Plan B. The Democratic leadership, fearing that rank-and-file Democrats would join the Republicans and protect parental rights, instead hastily pulled the bill from the House floor. House Republicans deserve praise for standing up for mothers and fathers – it’s a shame that the liberal leadership thinks they know better than parents what’s best for children.

Despite the angst over fuel prices and the presidential race, rumors of a high school pregnancy pact stole headlines in some of America’s largest newspapers. This has prompted more parents to question what public education is really teaching their children about sex. During the 2007-2008 school year, Joseph Sullivan, the principal of Massachusetts’ Gloucester High School (GHS), noticed a serious spike in the number of girls who became pregnant during the school year. In an interview with Time, he admitted that the teen pregnancy rate had quadrupled at GHS, and he suspected that a group of sophomore girls agreed to “get pregnant and raise their babies together.”

While the media is consumed with whether or not such a pact exists, the story raises far more troubling issues regarding the school’s message on sexuality. Even if these students never struck an agreement, as Gloucester’s Mayor Carolyn Kirk insists, at the very least that these 16-year-old girls thought it was acceptable to be sexually active and become pregnant. And why wouldn’t they? GHS’s own policy encourages it. The school offers free on-site daycare for teen moms so that students can bring their babies to school. It also teaches “comprehensive” sex education to students in the ninth grade, just in time for high school. If the school is bending over backward to accommodate teen mothers and encouraging the promiscuity that leads to it, these girls would have no choice but to assume that premarital sex and motherhood are acceptable social norms and is not only okay but encouraged.

Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy said, “This is not a story about sex education.” What world does she live on? Of course it is! It just happens to be a story that liberals are trying to hide, as it confirms – once again – the failure of comprehensive sex education. Planned Parenthood celebrated when Gov. Deval Patrick (D) refused the federal funds for abstinence programs in Massachusetts schools. Had he accepted the grant and encouraged schools like GHS to use it to teach sexual restraint, the storyline in this fishing village would have been different. Instead schools like Gloucester insist on promoting promiscuity over abstinence in direct contradiction of the wishes of 78% of parents as was expressed in a 2007 Zogby poll. These parents don’t understand what’s wrong with telling kids to simply say “no.” Isn’t that the message we give them on other dangerous activities like drug and alcohol use? We tell them not to smoke. And unlike sex education, we don’t hand them filters and say “If you’re going to light up, smoke safely.” Now that public schools are starting to reap what they’ve sown with the “just do it” mentality, states are scrambling to accommodate kids and their poor decision-making that has been encouraged by the schools themselves. On teen sex, it’s time to stop treating the problem and start preventing it with the only birth control that is 100% effective … this is called abstinence!

This month, I need to share with you a true story. It’s stunning and highly motivating—and shows in stark terms what you and I are up against.

Are you familiar with a man by the name of Tim Gill? For most Americans—even those who are well informed—the answer is no. You see, Tim Gill operates in virtual anonymity, yet he is transforming the politics of state after state with unrivaled success. He does it all to advance the cause to which he has dedicated his life—the homosexual agenda.

So, will you join me for a few moments as I pull back the curtain on Tim Gill?

Tim Gill is a homosexual activist living in Denver. As the founder of Quark, a very successful software company, Gill amassed a fortune worth several hundred million dollars.

Fourteen years ago, he began pouring his massive wealth into the homosexual rights movement. As a result, dozens of gay rights organizations owe their existence to Gill. By 2001, his donations accounted for 20 percent of the combined income of homosexual rights organizations. And by last year, his foundation had given more than $110 million to such groups.

Gill’s Rocky Mountain prize

All of that, however, is just the backdrop to the story that I really want to share with you. In addition to his “strategic philanthropy,” he recently resolved to engage in “strategic politics.” So he started the Gill Action Fund and began pouring huge sums of money into political races. But unlike most political donors, he didn’t throw most of his money into high-profile contests. Instead, he invested the vast majority of his funds into carefully targeted state legislative races. He understood that it takes far less money to make a huge difference at the state level . . . and the results can be priceless.

Gill’s first target was Colorado. In 2004, he dumped $5 million into political races, mostly at the state legislative level. But he didn’t stop there. He also went out and found other millionaires and billionaires to join him in this effort. They poured huge money into blistering attack ads against conservative politicians in swing districts, who stood in support of traditional marriage. But they were clever enough not to attack the politicians over their opposition to same-sex “marriage.” Rather, the ads focused on issues important to the district—often twisting the facts beyond recognition to distort the conservative’s record.

The result was what one Republican legislator called a “tsunami” of money that swept several conservatives out of office, giving liberal Democrats control of the Legislature for the first time in 30 years.

The payback for Gill came quickly. One Colorado legislator summarized a recent legislative session this way: “Windmills, mill levies and a million paybacks to Tim Gill.”

And that’s exactly what Gill got: essentially a gay adoption law, a law that redefines the family as any two or more people living together, and a job protection law that can force even Christian businesspeople into hiring gays, lesbians or transgenders.

Iowa: A Case Study

With the Colorado Legislature as a notch in his belt, Gill set his sights around the country in 2006. He again focused on state races, targeting key states in the battle over marriage. Specifically, he set his sights on Republicans in swing legislative districts in order to flip the state’s Senate or House to Democratic control.

Among Gill’s victims was Danny Carroll, the Republican Speaker Pro-Tem in the Iowa House of Representatives. Carroll, like most Gill targets, was caught completely unawares. That’s because money didn’t come directly from Gill. He disguised his efforts by recruiting like-minded people all over the country to send small to medium-sized checks to the favored candidates.

Consequently, Carroll didn’t realize he’d been a target of a national homosexual campaign until a reporter from The Atlantic Monthly magazine called him after the election and pointed out specific contributions that were made to his opponent.

Targeting the country . . . state by state

In all, Gill spent $15 million around the country in 2006, and he won 50 of his 70 targeted races—defeating some pro-marriage leaders and giving Democrats new control of legislative bodies in several states.

Once again, Gill reaped huge policy rewards. In Iowa, Republicans lost the House. Under Democrat control, the proposed state marriage amendment was killed—a major coup for Gill considering that, just a few months later, an Iowa judge allowed the first so-called same-sex “marriage” outside of Massachusetts.

Gill also helped give Democrats legislative control in New Hampshire and Oregon, and lawmakers quickly responded by giving marriage (in all but the name) to homosexuals in both states.

Face-off: Focus Action versus the Gill Action Fund

But for all of Gill’s victories in 2006, his biggest investment resulted in a stunning defeat. In early 2006, Focus and Focus Action were gathering signatures to put a state marriage amendment on the Colorado ballot. Gill decided that would be a clever time to put his own domestic partnership measure on the ballot. With heavy resources going to support the marriage amendment, social conservatives would be hard-pressed to combat domestic partnerships at the same time. Plus, the many moderates on the issue would be able to split their votes, supporting marriage while still seeming “tolerant” by supporting domestic partnerships.

National commentators recognized the confrontation that this set up between Gill and Focus Action founder and chairman Dr. James Dobson.

Early on, polls indicated that Gill would likely win this confrontation. But thanks to the generous support of friends like you, Focus Action was able to mount a vigorous defense that fall—investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in high-quality radio and television advertising campaigns that helped to reshape the debate.

Just as importantly, Focus was able to mobilize pastors and churches throughout the state. Working with our associated state group, Colorado Family Action, we conducted pastors events and provided resources for a massive grassroots effort to educate values voters and get them to the polls. In the end, the state marriage amendment passed and Gill’s measure was defeated, 53 to 47 percent, despite Gill’s $2.5 million expenditure to get it passed.

Still, despite the stinging defeat that exposed Gill’s vulnerability, the threat he poses is likely to be even larger in 2008. Gill has openly boasted of an even bigger target list this year.

That’s not surprising, considering the success he’s had and the fact that he continues to recruit more financial heavy hitters to join him in his efforts. In fact, he had 200 leading donors at a gathering in Miami, where he told them, according to one attendee: “If I can make a difference in Colorado, you can make a difference in your home state. So let’s work together to take it to your states.”

One state that Gill is clearly targeting this year is New York. After all, the only thing that is blocking New York from becoming the first state to legislatively enact same-sex marriage is the GOP-controlled state Senate. But the Republican margin is only two seats, and Gill and his money are hard at work to flip that legislative chamber and win a major policy battle for the homosexual movement.

Other states that especially need to be on the watch for Gill activity are Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

One of the big reasons for the success of Tim Gill—along with all of his millionaire/ billionaire cohorts—is the fact that he’s been able to do virtually everything under the cover of darkness. By the time his targets figure out what’s happened, it’s too late.

By God’s grace and with your help, that won’t happen in 2008. With your partnership, Focus Action is planning to aggressively shine the light of day on Gill’s activity so that good people in each state can stand strong and protect their state from being hijacked by the homosexual lobby.

The fact is that Tim Gill is not only pouring his life’s earnings into the homosexual agenda, he’s also an evangelist for this cause in which he believes so deeply—constantly asking others to join him in his misguided mission to, as he puts it, “punish the wicked.” How can we not have the same commitment on behalf of righteousness?

Will you help us defend the family against this unprecedented assault? Our election-year efforts have never been more critical. Most importantly, will you also pray for America and ask God what He would have you do in this critical time for our nation?

God bless you for standing strong.

Sincerely,

Tom Minnery
Senior Vice President
Focus on the Family Action

P.S. Very few can write checks the size of Tim Gill’s. But we can each give something of significance. Will you please earnestly pray for our work? And if you are able, please consider supporting us financially. I, along with Jim Daly and the team here, gratefully thank you for your prayers and support.

Al Gore’s global warming concerns obviously are for everybody but himself . . . especially the businesses he is connected to which stands to make him a very rich man. He has the money and will be getting more of yours . . . let me see . . . I’m sure there is no conflict of interest here!

A Tale of Two Houses

House #1

A 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2400 a month. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern ‘snow belt’ area. It’s in the South.

House #2

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every ‘green’ feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground.

The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Waste water from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

~~~~~

HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the “environmentalist” Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford,Texas; it is the residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.